Out on the Escapade yesterday for some tech and rec diving. I waked up at about 7am and looked out and it was totally foggy. I could not even see Hwy 1 out from our house so it was not starting as the best day. The team gathered together and decided to go out to sea hoping the fog will clear as we motored out. Well it did not, so we decided to get close to shore and dive something that had some kelp on top so we could do our deco in there.

First dive was at Soberanes Wall. I dove this place first time in 1998 soon after arriving to California. I have meet some "crazy" divers that didn't believe in boatdiving so we would drive south on Hwy1, hike down a small trail, swim 400ft of shore to find the Kelp and do our dive. The worst part was hiking back to the car with you dark weight belt ;-). I still remember getting a second belt and hiding it at the water edge. I also remember taking Susan out of an diving date down to Soberanes. After that I was sure she was a keeper ;-)

A while after I learnt that there were very nice dive boats out of monterey and that they will go to the same places, but no hiking and good food was also provided. So Susan and I decided no more hiking and diving, and of we went to dive on the boats.

Soberanes wall goes from 40ft at the top, and there is a almost vertical drop to about 100-120 and then down to 150ft. The best part of the dive in btw 130 to 100ft with tons of life on the wall specially on the south end, and on the back side on the wall there is nice canyon full of metridiums that goes from 120 to 70ft, and half way on the canon there is a little rock stuck on it forcing you to ascend to go by. This is a perfect R3 or T1 dive.

There is a very nice set of bulb kept at the top which made it for a really fun deco scootering in and out of the kelp. We found some nice kelp crab handing in middle water.

Vis was crappy at the bottom, but really nice from 30ft up.

Second dive we headed back for Lobos Rocks to see if we could capture some GoPro video of the seal lions. However, the swells were a bit more than two weeks ago so it was more challenging to hand with them. The best action was btw 15-10ft but that was also were the breaking water were so it was tricky. After about 30min of playing there we were all about to puke our brownies so we head back to the boat, where most of us got a bit sick for the looping and spinning with the seals plus the boat movement on the way back.

I was the organizer for today's tech charter :-). During the week the plan was crafted. First dive would be at Mid-way where there will calm seas and no current, with 100ft visibility and several large yellow eye rock fish, followed by a nice splash at Lobos Rocks playing with the sea lions.

As the weekend approached conditions looked pretty bad, but it started getting better on Friday and Capt Jim decided to go have a look in the morning.

We motored out of the bay where seas were pretty calm, and found a strong winds but moderate swells in Carmel. So far so good. As we passed Carmel the Capt started to get a bit nervous about the forecasted winds for the afternoon, and they decided Mid-way was not a good option :-(. Instead, they decided Nixies was a better option.

We dropped down and headed West and descended on the pinnacle until we found a sandy patch about about 210ft. Soon after arriving Susan found a very nice Rat Fish and we stayed with it for about 5min. We covered our lights a bit no to disturbed it too much and after a few minutes it was very comfortable with us. It swam back and forth btw Susan and myself. Clinton's team also had a good encounter with this or other rat fish, and he got some good images here.

After playing with the fish we moved south on the pinnacle, and found a nice purple sea fan in the middle of a gorgonias field. We showed the sea fan to Dionna and Mark which seem to enjoying the strange creature. We moved a bit farther south and ran into a group of 4 basket stars that were resting on top of a large elephant ear sponge. There was a nice juvenile rock fish in the middle of this pack. I think it was a juv tiger rockfish.

A little bit more scootering and we raw into a nice pack of dinoras, and soon after that we reached a section of the reef where you could see the sand slopping down to 250ft. Too deep for us so we headed back and motored towards the shallow part of the pinnacle. There we found a mid-size wolf eel picking out from a crack. The eel was sharing its den with a nice china rockfish.

So very good first dive, however part of my plan has been spoiled. We decided that at least we needed to do Lobos Rock so we headed a bit farther south. We got to the rocks and although there was a strong wind the swells were not that bad so we decided to test the water.

Susan and I got in the water and totally ignored the anchor line and just headed for the rocks where btw 20-30 seals were waiting for us. We descend to about 20ft and spent the next 1hr playing with the puppies. At the beginning they really didn;t know what to make of us, but after a while they realized we were not dangerous and that we wanted to play. Susan and I alternated at going into the pack and scootering with them, and towards the end we were all very close together and near the surface admiring and enjoying this unique opportunity to engage with this sweat animals. I hope our dog, Naia, could be with us. I'm sure she would have had fun with them.

The ride home was a bit knotty, but totally worth while. We had 3 humpbacks and dolphins riding the bow again.

Out today diving with one of June BAUE tech charters. We finally were able to make it out of the bay and heard to Big Sur. We were hoping to dive SUR 19, but conditions were a bit too rough to get there. Captain Greg and Matt decided to dive at K2 and as we dropped the down-line we could actually see very blue and clear water. It was not all roses as we could see the wake of the current on the red-buoy. Ohh boy it's going to be one of those....

Susan, Jim and myself were the first team out of the gate and we immediately had to point the scooter into the current. It took a bit of work for Susan and I to make it to the line, and we could see Jim pushing hard to get there on the surface. We signaled him to dropped down a few feet in order to reduce his drag and he then was able to meet the team and head down.

We followed the line for a few minutes and found a long section of rope at about 50ft. A this point the line was almost horizontal all the way to the top of K2. Visibility at the peak was about 50ft.

From there we followed the wall NW until we reached the north peak, and jumped to the a small annex that's 40ft away on the sand, and from there followed the structure to the edge of the West wall and we could see the small swim- thru that pushes out to the wall. We found a small toqui~na on the way down, as well as an interesting 2ft tall sand ripple that had tons of life on it, including a small shark egg case. There were several large vase sponges near the swim through.

After about 20 min we headed back to the main wall and enjoyed the forest of gorgonias that covers the structure from 190ft to 140ft on the north end. These gorgonias have plenty of water movement at this location and we saw a couple of nice basket stars.

We followed the wall back toward K2 and motored in and out of a big school of rock fish, and found several large lingcods resting on ledges. While at the shallow peak we enjoyed seeing some sheep-heads while getting tossed around by the 10ft swells that were rolling over the structure. After 40min of fun we let go and drifted north about 2 miles while riding the current.

Deco was very interesting with a lot of creatures in mid-water. We had a school of baby squid (1/4 to /1/2 inch long) coming in and out of focus, and then some large school of juvenile fish. We patiently waited for a whale to come by but it didn't happen.

On the way back home we had several large school of dolphins approaching the boat, and riding the bow of the boat while doing all kind of acrobatics maneuvers.

EPIC Day for Diving!!! Started the day with some uncertainty with the wind, fog and swell, it was hard to determine where we were going to be anchoring. Jim motored the boat toward sites near the Lobos area and there seemed to have been some fog rolling in with some white caps at a distance and of course swell. We motored Northeast direction towards Outer Outer Pinnacles and circled around several times. The debate began....Will the fog lift? will the wind pick up more? Will we dive here? Conditions were iffy...After a short delay of the crew working together and showing determination. We dropped the ball at a site somewhere near Outer Outer Pinnacles. The site was AWESOME in topography. The vis was at least 100ft. We scootered around viewing the schools of Blue Rockfish, small schools of Canaries, and some Rosy Rockfish and Starry Rockfish. We also saw lingcods. I was able to see my favorite Vase Sponges and for the first time I saw a Crinoid (Feather Star). I wish we had more time to spend down at that site. Truly Amazing!! Deco was very relaxing in the blue abyss... okay.. a bit cold...worth every shiver though. Awesome Day.. All the divers came up with big smiles on their faces. Thank you Kevin for diving. Jim and the Escapade Crew were excellent ...

Took a (non-BAUE) friend to Lobos today who's been asking me to go with him for a while. Man, am I glad I did. I don't think I've seen the swell model that uniformly dark blue for a long time. We arrived to an empty parking lot, glassy smooth water, and aquarium-like vis inside the cove. I had been wanting to check out the "caves" in Coal Chute cove for quite some time but had not had ideal conditions until today, so we decided to go for it. We dropped at the worm patch into the kelp forest of nature shows: perfectly vertical stipes, vis for miles, and god rays shining down through every break in the canopy. From there we kicked across to coal chute over reef and rubble that is usually obscured by the murky water that tends to prevail inside Whaler's Cove. The highlight of the outward journey was a large male sheephead on the eastern side of middle reef. Arriving at the wall on the outside of Coal Chute, we kicked around to the other side and came across the larger of the two passages. Hovering outside the entrance, the chamber was backlit by the opening at the top and a massive school of blue rockfish (both adults and juveniles) were gathered near the ceiling. We kicked in a little ways and looked around, before exiting and and kicking further along the wall. The second swim-through, more of an arch, was equally epic. We kicked back across the cove, hoping to spot a leopard shark (sadly, none appeared, but we encountered the sheephead again) and surfaced right off the end of the ramp.

For a dive that averaged maybe 25 feet and with a max depth of 34, I consider this in my top 5 best dives at Lobos to date.

Sunday provided some great diving, with visibility > 50 feet on the first dive and a great site to boot!

There were 3 teams of divers on the boat, the first two jumped in and made it to the anchor line easily, Jaokim and I jumped in and realized there was no way we were making it to the anchor line, oh yeah, the others had scooters :) After a good workout and a line, we began our descent. We landed on a ridge at roughly 80 feet, dropped down further to around 120. The site offers some great views in the R3 range and has an interesting canyon between two walls that runs for a hundred feet or more. We spent about 10 minutes at the bottom before slowly coming up to another ledge around 70 feet.

Ascent and deco went well, although we took a pretty good ride in the current.

Matt and I dove Twin Peaks today. Conditions weren't very promising as there was a good sized swell rolling into Monastery in the morning, and seas at Lobos had been so large Saturday that no diving was allowed. Viz wasn't great at the boat ramp, and we put our bottom stage and deco bottles and scooters on the float knowing that we might just have to turn around pull them out again if viz at the Lone Metridium was low. After scootering out to Hole in the Wall on the surface, however, the water temp dropped to 48F, viz opened up and we knew we were in for a good dive. We scootered out along the ridgeline in increasingly cold water and increasingly good viz, and while the water was a painfully cold 46F at the end of Twin Peaks, we had at least 50' of visibility. The difference in conditions from the last time I did this dive was striking - the encrusting barnacles were all gone, replaced with the usual beautiful anemones and sponges. As we had brought bottom stages in addition to our 85s, we were able to spend 25 min or so just swimming around and enjoying the marine life and scenery, before turning the dive and scootering back along the ridgeline, through schools of fish and krill. Especially considering that our expectations for the day were low, we had a really great dive.

Sue, Beto, Dionna, Mark, Nick and I went out for a nice Easter dive today. Conditions were very flat and we discussed the possibility of heading to Midway Pinnacle, but given the gas mix in our tanks and the fact that it was an hour closer to home, we decided to dive Ed Cooper's wall. This was my first time at the site and it was truly a spectacular dive. The water was cold, dark blue and very clear as we dropped down to the top of the wall. TAhe sponges, schools of bluefish, ling and various rockfish decorating the wall, which stretched out as far as the eye could see, made for a spectacular scooter experience. 20 min into the dive turned in to a chute and gradually ascended the reef to 110', where we began our deco among salp and Scrippsia Pacifica. It's hard to imagine a more beautiful setting in which to appreciate a fine Easter morning!

Our tech trip on Saturday started with the following forest-cast (notice the mention of a train of steep waves???):

SOUTHERLY WINDS WILL INCREASE OVERNIGHT AS A STRONG COLD FRONTAPPROACHES THE COAST. THESE STRONG WINDS WILL GENERATE STEEP FRESHSWELL. IN ADDITION...RAIN PLUS A LARGE SWELL UP TO 20 FEET WILLBUILD IN FROM THE WEST SATURDAY AS AN ASSOCIATED LOW PRESSURESYSTEM PUSHES INTO NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. THIS LARGE SWELL TRAINWILL BE STEEP AND IS EXPECTED TO PERSIST INTO SUNDAY. AT THE SAMETIME A SOUTHERLY SWELL WILL MOVE INTO MOST OF THE COASTAL WATERS.THIS COMBINATION WILL LEAD TO VERY HAZARD CONDITIONS.

However, the 35 knot winds were from the south which was supposed to make the bay flat. As we motored out we saw white caps inside the harbor and there were some wind waves from the south at Mile Bouy. Capt Jim took a look at the condition and monitored the wind and waves for a while, and as we hanged it there the waves coming from the south diminished quite a lot, so he gave the go ahead for the team of divers: Doug, Eric, Clinton, John, Susan and Beto.

We descended following the down-line and had great vis all the way to 100ft. Once we reached the bottom we found about 5-10 vis with a lot of sand in suspension. No the best conditions.... however, we just relaxed and zoomed into the invertebrate life at the site. We found tons of nudibranches, some of them trying to climb into the gorgonias, 3 nice basket starts and a lot of lingcods in the sand and crevices. The top of the site had very nice colonies of metridiums.

During deco vis was nice and we had tons of salps to look around.

Capt Jim said there were about 15min during the dive were the weather was totally crazy. It rained very hard, with 35knot winds and the waves came back. He could not have pick up any divers during that interval :-0. However, it didn't lasted very long so divers were not aware of it. I think we squeezed a dive in but probably not the smartest things to do after all.

Today the the bay is covered with NW white caps and I can see the train landing over Point Pi~nos ;-)